A NEW quality report has rated the effectiveness of services at Abbey Surgery in Tavistock as ‘good’ following a inspection in June.

Last December, Abbey Surgery underwent an inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) — the independent regulator of health and social care in England — its first under the CQC’s new programme of inspections. It was given an overall rating of good, with a result of ‘good’ in four categories; safe, caring, responsive and well-led. However, it was deemed to require improvement in the category ‘effective’.

The surgery was told it needed to make improvements in establishing and operating effective audit and governance systems to evaluate and improve practice. This was in respect of having a programme of clinical audits and re-audits to demonstrate improved patient outcomes.

It also needed to assess, monitor and mitigate risks relating to the health, safety and welfare of service users, in respect of reviewing practice procedures for excluding patients from the quality outcomes framework programme so that all eligible patients were offered a review of their health.

After the December inspection, the practice sent the CQC a plan showing how these issues would be addressed.

A second inspection was carried out on June 8 to monitor these changes, and the practice’s ‘effective’ category has been upgraded to ‘good’.